


To Appreciate What You Meet

by ninemoons42



Category: Dune Series - Frank Herbert, Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), Inception (2010)
Genre: Charity Auctions, Community: help_japan, Knifeplay, M/M, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-28
Updated: 2011-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames sees Arthur as something different, something other. This is not necessarily a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Appreciate What You Meet

  
title: To Appreciate What You Meet  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
pairing: Arthur/Eames  
warnings: Our boys being BAMFs, and a whole truckload of unexpected Dune references. Eames being a Dune geek. [I watched the SciFi Channel miniseries over the Easter weekend.] Several people on Twitter were instrumental in giving me several AMAZING mental images, which I have attempted to do justice to in this fic.  
This is my fic for [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/we_reflamingos/profile)[**we_reflamingos**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/we_reflamingos/) , who won me in Round One of the auctions at [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/help_japan/profile)[**help_japan**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/help_japan/). She wanted badassery, she wanted porn, so I've tried to deliver both here.  
disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.  
summary: Eames sees Arthur as something different, something other. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

  
The job goes pear-shaped, as it often does these days now that they're working with sub-par extractors.

Eames drops the pistols he's picked up from some fallen projections. He draws his favored rifle, a SIG SG 552, shoots blindly from around a wall as he tries to calculate another escape route - and then the radio hanging off his belt squawks, once.

"Eames! Position!"

"Ariadne, christ, what the hell happened?"

"Burke got shot out of the dream as soon as the projections had seen him - Arthur sent me to extract - I've got everything but I don't know where he is now!"

" _Fuck_ this," Eames mutters. "Get out of the dream already; I'll try to find him and kick him out."

"Be careful, Eames."

 _Easy for you to say,_ Eames thinks. _I have no idea where to start looking._

The dream is an anonymous floor in an anonymous office building. It's a cubicle farm - yes, that means the projections could be anywhere, but it also means that he actually can find alternative ways out. He takes a deep breath, recalls the five escape routes that Ariadne had built into the maze - and he fires a warning burst, tracks left, going as fast as he can in a squat-crawl of a run.

He dreams up another magazine after spraying another group of crazed projections, ducks into the eastern corner office and locks the door. He's fine - he just smells of cordite and other people's blood.

"Damn it all, Arthur, where are you," he mutters around the metal and the grit, lying heavily on his tongue and teeth.

Something goes _thump_ , and he curls his finger around the trigger on the rifle, crouched for cover behind a flimsy black desk.

The door crashes open.

Arthur rolls to his feet, a lazily graceful motion. "I heard that," he says, and he's tipping his head toward the desk, though his eyes are still trained on the broken door. "Worried for me?"

"Always," Eames says, and he crawls out of cover, moves past Arthur to cover the door.

"There's no one there, and no one else is coming for us here, not yet. I got most of them on the way in."

"No gun?"

"I don't need one," Arthur deadpans, and with that, Eames turns to look at him.

He's lost the suit jacket somewhere along the way, and he's missing his shoulder holsters; his tie is askew, and there are white streaks of dust all along his trousers. His hair has fallen loose around his shoulders, longer than it would actually have been topside.

In his hand is a -

"Is that a _crysknife_?"

And Arthur smiles and moves his other hand into view, revealing the second knife: double-edged, curved blade. Handles wrapped in braided leather.

Eames manages to tear his eyes off the knives long enough to notice several things: the bloodstains on Arthur's cuffs, the sheaths attached to his belt. His collar gone dark with sweat.

He raises his eyes to Arthur's face and nearly swallows his tongue at the other man's smile.

Arthur blinks once - and when he opens his eyes, they're blue-in-blue.

"I'm rather happy to see you...safe," Arthur drawls, but whatever else he was going to say suddenly explodes into an attack.

Eames stops thinking and starts moving. He's dimly aware of Arthur, knows where Arthur is at every second, tracks Arthur with every breath and every flash of unearthly blue eyes. He knows it even as he's bringing ther rifle back up to bear on their attackers, squeezing off shot after shot with economy and precision.

They should be getting tangled up in each other, Eames thinks, as he moves his shoulder a fraction of an inch down, as he feels a knife slash past him and drive straight into the throat of a projection. Eames moves his feet, and Arthur's flowing right past him, long out of the line of fire by the time Eames shoots another projection right in the face.

Their arms are actually crossing as they step around each other, never straying, each motion bringing down another attacker. The reports of Eames's rifle, the choked screams as Arthur slashes at throat and temple.

Eames watches as though from far away, watches Arthur drop to his knees and throw one knife seemingly casually, and the hilt shakes as it sticks out of a projection's chest - before Eames takes it back and drops it right back into Arthur's waiting hand.

Arthur's shoulder brushes against his back, a sharp edge brushes against the nape of his neck, and Eames smiles and makes his last shot.

A splitting, searing line across his throat.

Eames drops into the darkness, smiling.

///

They leave on separate flights; Eames sighs and allows himself an ironic chuckle once he realizes his flight path will mean a stopover in Dubai.

Well, it's not for nothing he's "liberated" Arthur's e-book reader from his luggage - although as soon as he boots it up he lets out a laugh, realizing that Arthur's still one step ahead of him. All six of the original Dune novels are already queued up for him to read.

"Prescient much," Eames mutters, and he lets himself fall back into the harsh wastes of Arrakis, into the sietches and into the machinations of the Bene Gesserit.

///

When Eames returns to their Barcelona apartment, he is not surprised to see Arthur sitting on the couch, glasses perched on his nose, with one of Eames's battered paperbacks in his lap: _Chapterhouse Dune_.

He sits on the floor and Arthur smirks and promptly puts his feet in Eames's lap. "You dream yourself a Fremen often, darling? We could weaponize it, you know, you could go Fedaykin in the dreams."

Arthur laughs. "I'd rather not, thanks. Too much effort; it'd have to be like a forge, and we know I'm not cut out for that."

"Mmm, no - too bad," Eames says. He looks down and strokes Arthur's feet. "As for the knives?"

"Real, at least," Arthur says. "I kind of specialized in it, back when I was in the Corps. I didn't have to think about running out of ammo; I didn't have to think about suppressing it. It was much more efficient.

"Gave me nightmares for a long time, though. All that blood. Human bodies leave such stains behind."

"As opposed to leaving water behind," Eames says, and he grins when it breaks Arthur's mood. "Being a book fiend has its uses, especially when conversing with a fellow fiend of the same book."

"The technical term is geek."

"Boffin."

"Whatever," Arthur says, and he leans down to kiss Eames and Eames puts his hands in his hair almost immediately, pulls gently at the loose strands at the back of his neck.

Arthur gasps, once, a high and needy sound, and Eames yanks him straight off the couch and atop him on the floor. He takes the time to rescue his book - hey, it's one of the original paperback editions, it's rare and it's one of Eames's most cherished possessions - and Arthur's glasses, and then he dives back in. He buries his fingers roughly in Arthur's dark hair, tugs again and again, listens to Arthur quietly go crazy above him.

"God, you're, ah, doing that on purpose," Arthur growls as he nips at Eames's collarbone.

"Certainly, since I know it drives you mad."

"Fuck," Arthur says, breathy and passionate, and there's not much talking after that. Just heat, like searing desert winds. Skin, bared to all feeling and all sensation.

Eames looks into Arthur's eyes, watches him as he comes all over Eames's hand, and for a moment he thinks he sees himself. But it's a different him, an Eames filtered through Arthur's eyes. A stronger Eames, a more powerful Eames. More devious and cunning. Eames as a bloodstained pugilist.

Clarity, and the world opening up all at once to him.

The last image on his mind before he comes is of Arthur and melange, of Arthur looking at him with the Eyes of Ibad.

Eames smiles.

 **fin**   



End file.
